Colours of a Father
by Fuusaki
Summary: He had always seen the kids hold hands with their father as they walked to school and couldn't help but miss Shouyou sensei. But he had never imagined himself in the father's position. Drabble, short fic, long oneshot, whatever. Takasugi x Kamui.


**Colours of a Father**

**Anime**: Gintama

**Major Pairings**: TakaKamu 8D

**Summary**: He had always seen the kids hold hands with their father as they walked to school and couldn't help but miss Shouyou sensei. But he had never imagined himself in the father's position. Drabble, short fic, long oneshot, whatever.

**Disclaimer**: Under my hand, this pairing will be made canon. But it is not. **Yet**.

Today, jealousy was the colour of blue.

Or so Takasugi thought. Blue was the colour of the girl's uniform, hopping along the road with her father as he walked her to school, hand in hand. Blue was the colour of her eyes that danced with happiness and bliss and delight. Blue was how the wide, summer sky tasted on the tip of his tongue that day. There were also a number of other blue things on the street, but right now, Takasugi was only interested in the blinding blue harmony in front of his eyes and wondered what would happen if he cut the girl down with his sword. Would the blue vanish? Or would it only serve to spread until it threatened to swallow the entire world?

"Let's hurry up, dad! School will be starting soon!"

Blue was a dreadful colour that day, Takasugi decided. Thankfully for him, the presence of grey, murky rainclouds were lingering on the horizon. He turned his eyes to that small stretch of grey and wondered what it would be like if the world was grey.

**~X~**

Perhaps what made the colour blue punch an aching hole in Takasugi's chest that day was the memory of himself in a similar situation many years back.

"_Sensei._" A ten-year-old glaring Takasugi pouted angrily as he scowled up at Shouyou sensei. "I _don't_ want to go. Everyone will just _laugh_ at me. I can't dance anyway!"

"Come on now," Shouyou sensei said, dragging the boy along the dirt road by his arm. "Don't be such a spoilsport, Takasugi. All your friends will be there; even Gintoki is taking time off to come to this dance."

"You don't get it, sensei! He's only there for the strawberry milk!"

Shouyou sensei laughed, obviously not believing in such a remarkable comment about the innocence of his students. "Then why don't you come along and drink strawberry milk with him?"

Takasugi scowled deeper and ground his heels into the ground, refusing to move another step. "I don't want strawberry milk!" he protested, every part of him still refusing to budge from the spot. His sensei looked more amused than Takasugi would've liked him to be.

"Then find a purpose for going, then," he said, tugging on Takasugi once more. Takasugi hesitated for a moment, and then finally gave in, letting Shouyou sensei lead him along the riverbank as student and teacher walked side by side in the dying light of the red sun. As the first stars began to appear in the sky, Takasugi stopped and looked up at the twinkling eyes blinking down at the duo.

"Sensei?"

"Yes, Takasugi?"

"Do you think…" Takasugi blinked a few times before continuing. "Do you think that mother and father are in heaven?"

"I wouldn't know, Takasugi."

Takasugi clutched tightly onto his sensei's arm. "Do you think there's any chance they'll be in hell?"

"That's a pretty horrible question, Takasugi. Are you planning to visit them?"

"I really want to meet them one day," Takasugi replied, burying his face into Shouyou sensei's kimono. "I've only got a few hundred questions I need them to answer."

"I see. And Takasugi?"

"Yes, Sensei?"

"Did you finally decide on a reason to go to the dance?"

Takasugi looked away. "Well… yeah."

"Would you mind telling me?"

Takasugi never told him that the only reason he decided to go to the dance was so that he could walk the road together with Shouyou-sensei.

**~X~**

In his life, Takasugi would make a list of things that he regretted doing. He would constantly go over this list while watching the sun set in the west, naming each cloud after another as they disappeared in the dying light.

**[Things Takasugi regretted while watching the sunset]**

_He regretted not dancing with that cute girl at the dance his sensei had forced him to go to. Maybe if he did, he would see the world in an entirely different light._

_He regretted not stealing Zura's hair tie when he was sleeping, not putting a fly in a snoring Gintoki's open mouth and not hitting Sakamoto around the head when he laughed that annoying aha, aha, ahahahaha laugh of his._

_He regretted not being strong enough to save the samurai spirit when the Amanto came and took over earth._

_He regretted not asking Shouyou sensei the few hundred questions he wanted his parents to answer because in the end, his sensei was more of a parent to him than anybody ever was._

_But most of all, he regretted not holding onto Shouyou sensei's hand for a minute longer that night when he had asked about the stars._

"We must seem like grains of sand to the stars," Shouyou sensei had said. Takasugi secretly questioned what the stars really saw when they looked down on earth.

**~X~**

There was a soft thump and Takasugi opened his eyes blearily.

Somehow he had fallen asleep on the rooftop of a ramen shop. Even as the world slowly swam into focus, he saw an orange-haired boy in a grey outfit looking down at him with a strange purple umbrella in his hands.

"What?" he asked groggily, shielding his eyes from the blinding sun with one hand. The boy only smiled.

"Are you a strong man?"

The question was innocent and simple; yet, Takasugi couldn't help but think that there was a double meaning behind those words.

"Huh?" Takasugi looked up at the boy, confused. "Wha—"

He had to quickly roll out of the way, for the boy had slammed the umbrella down on the roof where his head had been only a few seconds ago. He scrambled to his feet and drew his sword, eyeing the boy guardedly but quickly brought his sword up again to meet the second blow from the umbrella. He secretly marvelled at how tough the umbrella was as a shock ran down his body. There was a gaping hole in the roof when the dust cleared and Takasugi looked at the boy in shock and confusion.

"What do you want with me?" he demanded warily. The boy smiled again.

"I'm looking for a strong father."

Takasugi barely had time to digest this when the boy attacked again, knocking him several metres backwards with a single punch. Takasugi caught his foot in midair to prevent a death-delivering kick to his face and twisted it sharply. The boy laughed as there was a cracking sound and the skin broke, blood spurting out like a fountain before punching Takasugi in the stomach, causing him to hit the ground on his back. His sword flew out of his hand and he was left completely defenceless. The boy limped over to him and sat upon his stomach, looking down into his sadistic eyes.

"You're strong, Samurai-san..."

A trickle of sweat ran down Takasugi's blood-coated forehead.

"…will you be my father?"

Will you be my father?"

Will you be my father?

The poor boy. He had no idea what sort of terrible father Takasugi would prove to be.

**~X~**

He had long fallen asleep on Takasugi's chest, making the samurai's breathing laboured, but he didn't care. The sky had turned grey again and as Takasugi closed his eyes, tiny droplets began to fall out of the sky.

_We must look tiny to the raindrops when they're higher up_, he thought, opening his mouth slightly and tasting the rain upon his tongue. _But when they're this close, there really isn't much difference for us on the ground after all_.

His fist slowly tightened around another wet but smaller wrist. The hand opened in response and held onto his firmly. He wondered if his own hands had felt as little and fragile in contrast to Shouyou sensei's and thought about how it felt now to the young Yato.

He wanted to replay that scene again, but he never imagined reliving it this way.

**~X~**

Today, jealousy was the colour of grey.

Grey was the colour of the boy's wet, damp clothes, stepping lightly over the shallow pools that formed murky mirrors in the footpath. Grey was the colour of the gravel-stained bandages wrapped around the boy's left leg. Grey was how cold but reviving the horizon felt against his burning skin. Only today, grey would be the colour of jealousy to somebody else, but not Takasugi.

He thought about what the world had felt like when it was blue, before he met grey.

**Author's Note**

To spread the word, Kamui is now officially in the character list, because I wrote to the FF Net Staff telling them to slap him up there. Anyway, I was just practicing the "Now and Then" theme we were writing in English, although this _**was**_ inspired when I saw a father and daughter walking to school together like the fic described.

Feedback would be really nice, but that's not enough to make you press that little button 8D


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